Division Leader: GFDL Weather and Climate Dynamics Division
emailTom.Knutson@noaa.gov
Focus Areas:
- Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change
- Detection and Attribution of Climate Change
- Climate Variability
- Climate Change Assessments
Thomas R. Knutson
Research Meteorologist, NOAA/GFDL
Feature: Webinar at Univ. of Maryland (May 18, 2020): Tough Regional Climate Change Problems: Detection/attribution and Projections for Hurricanes, Precipitation and Sea-level Pressure Trends
Research Interests
- Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change:
- Global warming and hurricanes (Overview web page, Updated June 12, 2020)
- Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates. (Nature Communications, 2018) by Bhatia et al.
- Intense tropical cyclone activity: Global projections for the late 21st century from dynamical downscaling of CMIP5/RCP4.5 scenarios (Journal of Climate, 2015).
- More Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Publications…
- Detection and Attribution of Climate Change:
- Precipitation trends over land regions: model assessment of detectable human influences and possible low bias in model trends Journal of Climate. Supplemental Material
- Summertime heat stress: Detection of anthropogenic influence. Climatic Change (2016). Supplemental Material.
- Regional surface temperature trends during the 20th century: assessment of CMIP3 and CMIP5 simulations (Journal of Climate, 2013). See Research Highlight page (summary of article).
- More Detection and Attribution of Climate Change Publications…
- Climate Variability
- A Multivariate AMV Index and Associated Discrepancies Between Observed and CMIP5 Externally Forced AMV. Geophysical Research Letters (2019) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson.
- Underestimated AMOC Variability and Implications for AMV and Predictability in CMIP Models. Geophysical Research Letters (2018) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson
- Atlantic major hurricane frequency: Its recent decline and the role of the Atlantic overturning circulation. (Nature Communications, 2017) by X. Yan, R. Zhang, and T. Knutson
- More Climate Variability Publications…
Climate Change Assessment Activities
- A new WMO Task Team report (in 2 parts) on “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change” is now available. Part I is published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Part II is available online (Early Online Release) through the BAMS website:
- I) “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment. Part I: Detection and Attribution”
- II) “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: Part II. Projected Response to Anthropogenic Warming”
- Main report .pdf file for Part II.
- Supplemental material for Part II: 1) Supplemental text; 2) Model projections tables; and 3) Author elicitation responses.)
- Third Assessment Report on Impacts of Climate Change on Tropical Cyclones in the Typhoon Committee Region (Dec. 2019). Full Report.
- Climate Science Special Report, Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Vol. I (2017). (T. Knutson was lead author of Ch. 3: Detection and Attribution of Climate Change, and of Appendix C: Detection and Attribution Methodologies Overview.
- “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change”, an assessment by a WMO Expert Team (Nature Geoscience, March 2010). For a copy of the full article, contact (email): nlomarda@wmo.int
- NOAA State of the Science Fact Sheet on “Atlantic Hurricanes and Climate” Updated May 2020.
Publications
- Bibliography (including .pdf versions of abstracts and some full articles)
Technical Notes
- A Note on 20th Century Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures as Reconstructed in the LDEO and UKMO Data Sets
- FMS Slab Ocean Model Technical Documentation
Data Sets
Climate Group Research
GFDL Global Warming Simulation
